Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree
|starring = Sterling Holloway Junius Matthews Bruce Reitherman Roddy McDowall Elizabeth Hartman Howard Morris Ralph Wright |narrator = Sebastian Cabot |music = Robert & Richard Sherman (songs) Buddy Baker (score) |studio = Walt Disney Productions Warner Bros.-Seven Arts |distributor = Buena Vista Distribution Warner Bros.-Seven Arts |released = (USA) (with The Ugly Dachshund) (UK) (with Peter Pan) |runtime = 26 minutes |country = United States |language = English |gross = $6.2 million (est. US/ Canada rentals)"Big Rental Pictures of 1966", Variety, 4 January 1967 p 8 }} Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree is a 1966 animated featurette based on the first two chapters of the book ''Winnie-the-Pooh'' by A. A. Milne. The film was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman and produced by Walt Disney Productions and Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. Its songs were written by the Sherman Brothers (Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman) and the score was composed and conducted by Buddy Baker. This featurette was shown alongside the live-action feature The Ugly Dachshund, and was later included as a segment in the 1977 compilation film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh with the new actors Talia Shire, Donald Sutherland, John Hurt and Robert Foxworth. It featured the voices of Sebastian Cabot as the Narrator, Sterling Holloway as Winnie the Pooh, Junius Matthews as Rabbit, (also the voice of Archimedes the Owl in the 1963 Disney feature film The Sword in the Stone), Bruce Reitherman as Christopher Robin, Clint Howard as Roo, Elizabeth Hartman as Kanga, Ralph Wright as Eeyore, Howard Morris as Gopher, and Roddy McDowall as Owl. Plot Winnie-the-Pooh, a bear living in the Hundred Acre Wood, is disappointed to find that he is out of honey. He hears a bee fly by and decides to climb a nearby honey tree, but as he reaches the beehive, a branch he is sitting on breaks, causing him to fall. Pooh's best friend, Christopher Robin, gives Pooh a balloon and he tries to trick the bees by disguising himself as a Little Black Rain Cloud by rolling in a mud puddle and floating up to the beehive. He pulls out some honey and eats it without noticing that it is covered in bees. The bees fly around inside his mouth causing him to spit them out. One of which is the queen whom he kicks into the muddy patch below. Soon, Pooh's disguise starts to drip, to which the bees attack him. The queen sees this and angrily flies up and stings him on the bottom. The sudden hit causes Pooh to swing up and down and get stuck at the beehive. He is then shoved out of the hole by the bees, who proceed to chase him away. Pooh, still hungry, decides to visit Rabbit’s house. Rabbit reluctantly invites Pooh in, and Pooh helps himself to jars and jars of honey until there is none left. He tries to leave, but gets stuck in Rabbit's front door, and Rabbit eventually discovers that, not even with his friends' help, is impossible to push Pooh out of the door, forcing him to wait until he gets thin enough to budge. In the meantime, Rabbit decides to decorate Pooh's bottom so he will not have to face looking at him being stuck for so long. While he is doing this, Kanga and Roo visit Pooh and give him some honeysuckle flowers which make Pooh sneeze, completely destroying the decoration. Rabbit is also forced to put up a "Don't feed the bear!" sign after Pooh tries to get honey from Gopher late at night. Rabbit leans against Pooh one morning and feels him move a bit. Ecstatic, Rabbit and Christopher Robin gather their friends to get Pooh out. Everyone except Rabbit pulls from outside while Rabbit pushes from inside. Rabbit shoves Pooh with a running start, and Pooh is launched free from Rabbit's door and into the air, and is shooted into the hole of another honey tree. The gang runs after Pooh and finds him stuck in the tree headfirst. Pooh happily eats inside the tree and tells his friends to take their time to get him out. Voice cast *Sterling Holloway as Winnie the Pooh, a bear who loves honey *Junius Matthews as Rabbit, a rabbit who is obsessive-compulsive and loves planting his vegetables in his garden *Bruce Reitherman as Christopher Robin, a seven-year-old boy and Pooh's best friend *Roddy McDowall as Owl, an owl who loves to talk about his family *Howard Morris as Gopher, a hardworking gopher who lives underground and often falls into his hole *Clint Howard as Roo, Kanga's energetic young joey *Elizabeth Hartman as Kanga, a kangaroo and Roo's mother *Ralph Wright as Eeyore, an old grey donkey who is always losing his tail and talks in a slow, deep, depressed voice *Dallas McKennon, Frank Welker, and Ginny Tyler as the Bees (uncredited) *Sebastian Cabot as The Narrator Production Walt Disney first learned of the Winnie the Pooh books from his daughter, Diane. "Dad would hear me laughing alone in my room and come in to see what I was laughing at," Diane later recalled. "It was usually the gentle, whimsical humor of A. A. Milne's Pooh stories. I read them over and over, and then many years later to my children, and now to my grandchildren." As early as 1938, Disney expressed interest in obtaining the film rights to the Pooh books by first corresponding with the literary agency Curtis Brown. In June 1961, Disney acquired the film rights. By 1964, Disney told his animation staff that he was planning to make a full-length animated feature film based on the books. A meeting was held with senior staff members to discuss the proposed film. However, during the meeting, Disney decided not to make a feature film, but instead a featurette that could be attached to a live-action film. For the first film, Walt and his collaborators turned to the first two chapters of the first book, "In which we are introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and some honey Bees, and the stories Begin", and "In which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets into a Tight Place". The scene where Rabbit deals with Pooh's being part of the "decor of his home", was not from the original book, and was reportedly contemplated by Disney when he first read the book. Following the mixed reception of Alice in Wonderland (1951), he turned the project over to staff members who were nonchalant with the original stories. He selected Wolfgang Reitherman to direct the project in hopes of Americanizing the characters and including more humor. Reitherman cast his son, Bruce, to voice Christopher Robin and the character of Gopher, who doesn't appear in the original stories, was added to the cast. Because other "Nine Old Men" animators were working on The Jungle Book (1967), only Eric Larson and John Lounsbery were assigned to animate the characters. Other character animators such as Hal King, John Sibley, and Eric Cleworth were brought onto the project. Music *"Winnie the Pooh" *"Up, Down and Touch the Ground" *"Rumbly in My Tumbly" *"Little Black Rain Cloud" *"Mind Over Matter" All songs were written by Robert and Richard Sherman, who wrote most of the music for the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise over the years, subsequently incorporated into the 1977 musical film, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which is an amalgamation of the three previous Winnie-the-Pooh featurettes including "Honey Tree". Originally, "Mind Over Matter" was about tempting Pooh to think about getting thinner again. The original lyrics can be heard on the soundtrack album from Disneyland Records. In the end, it ended up being the "Heave Ho" song in the final film. In 1964, when the Sherman Brothers were preparing to demonstrate "Little Black Rain Cloud" for Walt Disney, Robert Sherman reminded his brother Richard that Disney was from the Midwest and that he didn't pronounce the word "hover" like Californians would. Instead, he would pronounce it more like "hoovering". As Richard played the piano and sang, he repeatedly stumbled over the lyric, unable to get past the second line of the song. After a few tries Disney reportedly said, "Why don't you just tell us about it, Dick." The insight and inspiration for the Pooh songs came from an unlikely source, as is explained in the Sherman Brothers' joint autobiography, Walt's Time: }} Release The film was released on February 4, 1966 in the United States, as a supplement to Disney's live-action feature The Ugly Dachshund. It would later be included as a segment in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which included the two further Pooh featurettes, released on March 11, 1977. The film was released on April 18, 1966 in the UK, as a double feature with Peter Pan (1953). The film had its television premiere on March 10, 1970, as a special on the NBC television network. The special was sponsored by Sears, who was then the exclusive provider of Pooh merchandise. Reception The short initially received mixed reception. Howard Thompson of The New York Times said that "the Disney technicians responsible for this beguiling miniature have had the wisdom to dip right into the Milne pages, just the way Pooh paws after honey...The flavoring, with some nice tunes stirred in, is exactly right—wistful, sprightly and often hilarious. English critic Felix Barker strongly disliked it. E. H. Shepard called the short a travesty. A. A. Milne's widow, Daphne, is said to have liked it. See also *List of American films of 1966 Bibliography * References External links * Category:1966 films Category:1966 short films Category:1966 animated films Category:1960s American animated films Category:1960s musical films Category:1960s comedy films Category:Disney animated short films, 1960s Category:Winnie-the-Pooh featurettes Category:Films featuring anthropomorphic characters Category:Short films with live action and animation Category:Films set in England Category:Musicals by the Sherman Brothers Category:Animated musical films Category:Short films directed by Wolfgang Reitherman Category:Films produced by Walt Disney Category:Winnie the Pooh (franchise) Category:Films scored by Buddy Baker (composer) Category:American animated featurettes Category:Films with screenplays by Francis Ford Coppola Category:Films produced by Roger Corman